Moonwalk Team

Michael P. Czech is currently the Isadore and Fannie Foxman Chair of Medical Research in the Program in Molecular Medicine at the University of Massachusetts Chan Medical School. He was Chair of the Department of Biochemistry (1981 to 1989), and the founding Chair of the Program in Molecular Medicine (1989-2018). Czech earned the PhD degree in biochemistry in 1972 at Brown University, and a postdoctoral fellowship at Duke University Medical Center. He became Assistant Professor at Brown in 1974, rising to the rank of Professor in 1980. His research addresses mechanisms of signal transduction, metabolism and insulin resistance in type 2 diabetes and obesity. His lab revealed novel regulators of energy expenditure and lipid droplet functions in adipose tissue and their disruptions in disease.  Czech’s laboratory has recently applied RNAi and CRISPR techniques to discover novel drug targets and to develop therapeutic strategies for metabolic and fibrotic diseases.

Czech serves on the External Advisory Board of the IRB in Barcelona and is a member of the Scientific Review Board of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. He has received the Scientific Achievement Award (1982), the Banting Medal (2000) and the Albert Renold Award for mentorship (2004) from the American Diabetes Association; the David Rumbough Scientific Award of the Juvenile Diabetes Foundation (1985); NIH MERIT Awards (1997-2005 and 2012-2022); the Elliot P. Joslin Medal (1998), and the Jacobaeus Prize awarded in Umea, Sweden in 2009.